.
The Representatives distributed the guns and the cartridges to the
resolute band which surrounded them.

Some soldiers exclaimed, "Why do you take away our muskets! We would
fight for you and with you!"

The Representatives consulted whether they should accept this offer.
Schoelcher was inclined to do so. But one of them remarked that some
Mobile Guards had made the same overtures to the insurgents of June, and
had turned against the Insurrection the arms which the Insurrection had
left them.

The muskets therefore were not restored.

The disarming having been accomplished, the muskets were counted; there
were fifteen of them.

"We are a hundred and fifty," said Cournet, "we have not enough
muskets."

"Well, then," said Schoelcher, "where is there a post?"

"At the Lenoir Market."

"Let us disarm it."

With Schoelcher at their head and escorted by fifteen armed men the
Representatives proceeded to the Lenoir Market. The post of the Lenoir
Market allowed themselves to be disarmed even more willingly than the
post in the Rue de Montreuil. The soldiers turned themselves round so
that the cartridges might be taken from their pouches.

The muskets were immediately loaded.

"Now," exclaimed De Flotte, "we have thirty guns, let us look for a
street corner, and raise a barricade."

There were at that time about two hundred combatants.

They went up the Rue de Montreuil.

After some fifty steps Schoelcher said, "Where are we going? We are
turning our backs on the Bastille. We are turning our backs upon the
conflict."

They returned towards the Faubourg.

They shouted, "To arms!" They Where answered by "Long live our
Representatives!" But only a few young men joined them. It was evident
that the breeze of insurrection was not blowing.

"Never mind," said De Flotte, "let us begin the battle. Let us achieve
the glory of being the first killed."

As they reached the point where the Streets Ste. Marguerite and de Cotte
open out and divide the Faubourg, a peasant's cart laden with dung
entered the Rue Ste. Marguerite.

"Here," exclaimed De Flotte.

They stopped the dung-cart, and overturned it in the middle of the
Faubourg St. Antoine.

A milkwoman came up.

They overturned the milk-cart.

A baker was passing in his bread-cart. He saw what was being done,
attempted to escape, and urged his horse to a gallop. Two or three
street Arabs--those children of Paris brave as lions and agile as
cats--sped af